Passing on the gift of education

Early one morning in January 1974, Lynn Bain got a phone call that would change her life.

The call was from the Peace Corps, and it launched her on a journey that took her to the other side of the world and continues to this day.

Born to parents who were almost ready to retire -- her mother was 45 and her father was 61 -- Bain (then Lynn Scoggins) grew up on the go, living in Nice, France, for several years as a child and developing a keen desire to explore the world.

"I grew up always knowing that I wanted to travel," she said. "If it requires a plane trip and a passport, I'll go."

Eight months after receiving that call, Bain boarded a plane to Liberia, a country about the size of Virginia located on the west coast of Africa. Having graduated from Samuel Merritt University School of Nursing in Oakland, she was placed in the obstetrics ward of a 40-bed hospital near the village of Zwedru, about a day's journey from the capitol, Monrovia.

At first, Bain didn't like living out in the country and she would travel to Monrovia as often as possible to eat American-style food and take hot showers. But after a few months she adjusted to life in Zwedru and became close friends with Lillian Barbley, a local midwife who worked with her at the hospital. She came to love the town and its inhabitants, despite the differences in diet and lifestyle.

On weekend market days, a local man named Mr. Lookingglass would slaughter a cow so the villagers could get meat.

"It was so tough, but if you were lucky you could find deer meat and that was so much better," said Bain. "We would eat mostly fish and sometimes chicken. They would always come to you live, though, and you would have to find some small boy to kill it for you. We had a house boy that would cook for us and do the laundry. Everyone had house boys. It was the way they could pay their school fees."

For two years, she helped care for infants in the hospital and became a part of the surrounding community. It was also during this time that she met her future husband, Geoff Bain, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer. Though they worked in different villages and saw each other rarely, they planted the seeds of a friendship that would blossom into romance years after their return to the United States.

Bain finished her Peace Corps assignment in December 1976, said her goodbyes and headed home. She settled back into a nursing career in the Bay Area and kept in touch with Barbley for about a year, but violence erupted in Liberia and her friend vanished in the escalating chaos that would eventually become a civil war.

Bain feared that Barbley had been injured or killed, but with no way to re-establish contact she could only wait and wonder if her friend had survived. She went on with life as best she could, and in 1981 she began a "commuter romance" with Geoff Bain, who had found work as a forester for the Bureau of Land Management on the North Coast. They kept up a long-distance relationship for six years until Lynn told him that she couldn't stand the distance anymore. They got married in 1988, and she moved to Humboldt County to start a family with her new husband.

Sadly, it was not to be. Geoff was diagnosed with cancer just over a year after their wedding. "We were blessed to have another six months together," Lynn said.

Though she had moved to Humboldt County to be with her husband, Bain decided not to return to the Bay Area after he died. She liked the beautiful environment and the lack of traffic on the North Coast, and she found a job in the obstetrics ward at St. Joseph Hospital where she could turn her energy toward helping others.

And so it went for 20 years, until in 2009 an opportunity arose for Bain to travel back to Liberia with a group of former Peace Corps volunteers. She returned to the country and spent a week working in hospitals and clinics in several towns before heading back to Zwedru to search for her long-lost friend.

Although the war had changed the village almost beyond recognition, Bain located Barbley's former neighborhood and began making inquiries. To her surprise and delight, she found that Barbley had survived the war.

"I met a man who knew who she was and took me to her house, but she wasn't home," said Bain. "I left a note with my name and phone number and described where I was staying. I didn't know the address of the boarding house, but that night a man knocked on my door and said a lady was there to see me. It was quite joyous! We hadn't seen each other since 1976. I was so thrilled to see her again! I said, 'Lillian, you look the same,' and she said, 'No, I have gray hair.' I said, 'Well so do I.'"

After catching up that night, the two agreed to meet again the next day. They met in the market where Barbley worked and talked about all that had happened over the past 33 years. Barbley told the story of how she and her family had escaped the civil war by fleeing to Ghana to live in a refugee camp.

As they reminisced, Barbley told Bain about her grandson, Marvin Garbeh Davis, who had grown up in the camp. "She said, 'Do you think you can help my grandson? He's going to university,'" said Bain. "I said, 'What can I do?'"

At the time, Davis was an undergraduate student at Cuttington University in Monrovia in the Peace Negotiations and Conflict Resolution program. Although she had never met him, Bain agreed to help pay his college fees and sponsor his visa application so he could apply for graduate programs in the United States.

She returned home without meeting Davis, but she began sending money to the university in Monrovia to help with his tuition. "At the time I wondered, 'What am I getting myself into?'" she said. Despite these initial misgivings, however, she continued sending money to help with Davis' schooling.

After three years of support, Davis graduated from Cuttington in June of this year with a 3.63 GPA, and with Bain's sponsorship he received a visa and was accepted into a master's program in international studies at Chapman University in Southern California.

"I'm very proud of him," Bain said in an interview the day before Davis arrived in Humboldt County for their first face-to-face meeting. "I've never met him in person, but we correspond through email and Facebook, and he calls me every day. He calls me, 'Mum.' I don't have any birth children, but when he first did that I thought, 'Oh my, I've got a son!'"

Davis arrived at the Arcata Airport on Sept. 19 to find Bain and a crowd of supporters awaiting him. He wrapped her in a bear hug as soon as he walked through the gate.

"It was a really shaky flight from Sacramento, and I was shocked to see everyone at the airport. It was a very emotional experience for me," said Davis.

Over the next several days, Bain took him on a road trip to meet with some of her Peace Corps friends and eat a traditional meal with the Friends of Liberia organization. "It was beautiful with all the trees, all the redwoods," said Davis in a phone interview. "We had lunch in Crescent City, then we went to Oregon and had dinner in Portland. The drive by the ocean was so beautiful. I've never seen something like that."

Davis returned to Chapman on Sept. 24 and resumed his classes. He said the courses are filled with students from all over the world, and hearing their stories has encouraged him in his dream of returning to Liberia to improve conditions for his people.

He is adjusting to the culture shock of living in a different country, but he still finds the pace of American life too brisk for his liking.

"Coming to America from Liberia is a big thing. The people there look at it as utopia. They think of it as a land of opportunity, like a dream land. They think when you come here, all your suffering is over, like you're going to heaven now," he said. "My first impression of America was that everything here just happens so fast. There is no connection, no relationship. Back home things move much more slowly and there is more conversation. ...

"I miss the slow pace and the food and the family connections. You don't have to have much in Liberia to have a good life, but here in America you have to have so much just to have the basics. I didn't think I'd ever see a homeless man in America, and when I did, I couldn't believe it!

"I've learned that America has its own share of problems, but Americans are very optimistic. They don't give up. Look at the Great Depression. America has had two or three national crises in the past century, but Americans always believe that it will be okay tomorrow. Back home, people give up very easily. They blame everything on the government and won't take responsibility. They shift blame to the government without working to help change it or do anything," he said.

Davis wants to help change things in Liberia by getting his doctorate and returning home to work with refugees and poor communities.

"My main focus will be refugees. Each time I work with them, I know their feelings, I know what it's like," Davis said. "It's a very, very terrible feeling, believe me. Whole families sleep on the floor and wake up in the morning to no breakfast, no school. Rice, beans and flour are the rations. ... Most of the girls in the camps go into prostitution very early to help feed the family. The water systems are so bad that everyone gets sick; there are no sanitation programs. It's a terrible experience, like a prison camp. ...

"The problem we have back home is that the government doesn't have enough resources -- or maybe they do and they're just greedy -- but all the money is concentrated in Monrovia and very little gets out to the other areas. People feel more safe working with NGOs (non-governmental organizations) rather than government, so I want to work with them to bring clean water to the communities and do back-to-school programs, soccer for peace and youth education."

As for Bain, she now works as a hospice nurse at Hospice of Humboldt. She said the transition from working with newborns to those facing the last months of their lives was a natural one.

"You don't come into this world alone, and I really think you should never go out of this world alone," she said. "I love my job and the people I work with. The patients I've met, each one has blessed me and I've kept them close to my heart. I've met some people I never would have known otherwise. It's been a very good experience."

Although she sometimes feels overwhelmed by the costs of Davis' education -- saying only that it costs "a lot" -- she is also excited to have a chance to contribute so much to another person's life.

"It was great to finally meet Marvin. It was almost like we had known each other forever. I told him I couldn't be more proud of him even if I had been his birth mother," said Bain. "I feel honored to help him because you never know where it's going to end. Who knows, maybe he'll be a future president of Liberia? I don't know where it's going to end, but I know he'll do some good things for his country."